Business

How to Shift PR From Vanity Metrics to Value-Driven Measurement

This article is part of SWOT Team, a new series on Mashable that features insights from leaders in marketing, brand-building and public relations.

Vanity, to any degree, is typically a substitute for things (or people) that lack true substance.

The truth is, in our modern, self-obsessed culture, we all suffer from some level of vanity — but beyond a certain threshold, it shifts from tolerable to destructive.

We've all heard stories of the stereotypical wealthy playboy who invests in nightclubs in Miami, L.A., New York, and St. Tropez to bolster his image and access to lines of stilettoed girls. These "vanity businesses" — as they are often referred to — propagate one's intent to derive value from things upon which, outside their own self-generated bubble, are meaningless.

PR, I'm afraid, has inadvertently fallen into the pattern of the archetypal wealthy playboy. Not entirely by its own fault, but because — like the playboy — PR seemingly doesn't have any viable alternatives.

For years, the industry in aggregate has struggled to prove its value, lagging behind in technological innovation — at least from a quantitative standpoint. The very fact that PR exists and commands budgets is repulsive to some; therefore even proponents of PR often meet it with suspicion and skepticism.

Can't live with it, can't live without it.

To assuage PR’s reputation as a profession that lacks any measurable merit, we have been forced to construct a non-automated, yet systematic approach to customizing data. This will help PR professionals defend our seat at the marketing table.

So, what are the current "vanity metrics," and how can we think about the value of PR in a different way that will provide long-term benefits? Read on.

Impressions are everything ... or are they?

Let’s say, for sake of example, that every day I walk by one hundred men on the street. They look me up and down but never say a word; they just mosey on by. "Wow!" I may think. "I've made quite an impression on those men, perhaps one of them will turn ‘round, come up to me, ask for my number, take me on a date, then marry me."

Now, I'm not completely incapable of romantic fantasy, but this is highly unlikely. If you were my friend, you'd tell me that I was out of my mind, and that I need to get a grip.

I’m sorry to be the bearer of bad fantasyland news, but in the world of PR, 5 billion eyeballs scanning a headline of your very sexy press release doesn't actually have any measurable impact. It’s a nice-big-fat-juicy-number, but it will not map to insights about your PR activities; and it will not enable you to make better decisions about the brand you represent.

What to measure: Map traffic to your website directly attributed to PR activities. It will be a much lower number than the “impression” number, but will give you a more accurate depiction of your key audience segments’ interest in your brand.

He HITS on you; then he leaves

Let’s continue with the playboy analogy, shall we?

The playboy is masterful at the pursuit and sealing the short-term deal. Much like a media "hit," he spikes, then falls to a low, incapable of stomaching a meaningful outcome; because he’s relatively useless beyond the climax.

As one of my favorite PR measurement gurus, Katie Delahaye Paine, so aptly states: “HITS are How Idiots Track Success.”

Media placements are the result of extremely hard work, to be sure — but are not an end in and of themselves.

What to measure: Observe how the audience is engaging with the media placement and whether or not it drives them to take any specific interactions on your digital properties: social shares, blog sign ups, whitepaper downloads, demo requests.

Beyond lip service

Image: Mashable composite. iStock

“Share of Voice” (the percentage of all online content and conversations about your company, compared against those of your competitors), is a term I hear regularly in meetings with CMOs during discussions of success metrics. In essence, it has become the panacea to a dearth of data-driven PR metrics.

The caveat of using Share of Voice as a proxy for PR measurement?

For starters, it's impossible to manually track all of the online content and conversations without sophisticated machine learning, data mining and natural language processing (NLP) technology. So what you’re left with is likely 25-30% accuracy (that’s probably a high estimate) around those results when it comes to what really moves the needle for your business.

Second, going back to this idea of vanity, it matters less how much share of the industry voice you have, and more about the quality of the voice and whether or not your key constituents are understanding what it is you have to say.

In other words, brands are best served to see the “gaps in coverage” against their competitors, so they know how and where to insert themselves in meaningful ways, with messages proven to be effective. Yes, it’s important to be part of the conversation — but if it's a useless conversation about things that don’t have impact on your bottom line or topics already under discussion, then it’s just noise. Brands should strive to control the message, not react to the messages of others.

What to measure: Track the key messages for your brand and see how the media are placing them in news articles, blog posts, etc. Then, continue to track these key messages across social channels to understand which ones are resonating or “sticking” with core audience segments: the ones who will actually buy your products or services.

The future of value-driven measurement

I recently had an interesting conversation with Eric Savitz, a partner at Brunswick Group in San Francisco and avid technology writer for Forbes. Says Savitz, who represents some of the biggest brands on the planet:

“Clients will always want to know how it’s all working. Some track success to social shares, some are looking at byline article placements, and one of our biggest clients sees ‘Share of Voice’ against their competitors as the key metric.”

The point? Even the most sophisticated companies give weight to different aspects of their PR efforts. PR will never be a "one size fits all" solution. By nature, it requires a creative process and extreme level of influence in order to have an impact.

But measurement for measurement’s sake will have little impact on PR’s future as a key driver of business. In fact, it will most likely have the adverse effect. Doing away with vanity metrics — which lack substance and serve to perpetuate the idea that you can't measure PR activities with any real accuracy — is the first step toward creating a viable framework for PR measurement.

Once the playboy is out of the picture, you've got room to pursue something tangible — which won't leave you banging your head against the proverbial wall, hoping for a better result.

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